


Echoes of the past

by Roadstergal



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Abduction, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Friendship, Gen, Genderbending, Love/Hate, M/M, Mindfuck, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-03
Updated: 2011-08-04
Packaged: 2017-10-22 04:49:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/233933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadstergal/pseuds/Roadstergal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dom walked away from that spinning top; all he wants to do is spend his time in reality with his children.  But reality refuses to leave him alone...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the inimitable Kahvi for plot bunnies and beta.

If Dom Cobb had learned anything in his time, it was to avoid phrases like 'a dream come true.'

He therefore thought of his current life in more prosaic - and accurate - terms. He had gotten far too many tastes of what life would be like if his dreams actually came true, and so was far better pleased with reality.

It helped that reality was currently treating Dom rather well. Whatever magic Saito had wrought had left Dom's substantial bank balance intact, filthy though that lucre was. That didn't matter, now; money had no morals. It was only a means to an end, and that end was now Dom's freedom to spend his time with Phillipa and James. He took full advantage of that freedom. He played with them, delighting in how they had grown in his absence, discovering new loves and new aspects to their personalities. Phillipa had discovered Lego, and had two full buckets, which she enjoyed building into impossibly soaring shapes. A Jewish playmate of James had given him a dredel, and he delighted in spinning it, laughing when it shuddered to a stop, curiously tracing the symbol that landed upright. Dom could watch them for hours - dancing James on his knee, adding pieces to Phillipa's constructions, listening to her excited prattle and James's shy contributions. He would eventually take them in to clean up for dinner, and would read them stories after tucking them into bed.

They found the story of Sleeping Beauty appropriately terrifying.

Dom did find Miles to be a little too forceful about offering to look after the children if Dom found that he needed some time by himself. He never did, after all. Even the time the kids spent at school was far too much time to himself; he never wanted another moment. The children were here, and they would grow up so fast; Mal was most certainly _not_ here, and Dom's time alone hung heavily on his shoulders.

Yes, if he ever doubted that this was reality, there was a potent counterbalance, right there. Surely Mal would be present in any dream of his.

So it was highly unwelcome to hear that far too familiar, sultry, French-accented voice one lazy summer afternoon as Phillipa sat on his lap, both of them relaxing in Dom's favorite armchair.

"Dom, sweetheart," Mal's voice said behind him, level but with an undertone of worry. "Come back to me."

"Do you hear that?" Dom asked Pillipa, nervously.

"Hear what, daddy?" she asked, clearly upset at the interruption of her story of the dead squirrel she had found.

"That voice..." He trailed off as it continued.

"Dom, please, I miss you."

"You're not listening, daddy!" Phillipa frowned, petulantly, and hopped off of his lap to the floor. Dom hardly noticed. The voice, behind him - it must be a hallucination. Somehow. Mal was gone, completely, for good - she could _not_ be real. She could _not_ be behind him... Dom turned, his gaze sweeping across the warm wood of the dining-room table, to the corridor lined with their favorite prints - a corridor that was now suffused with a light so bright it hurt his eyes to look at it.

"Come to me, baby."

And how could he not?

* * *

Dom opened his eyes, blinking them against the painfully bright light that shone into them from above. He stirred, and his body responded sluggishly. It felt stiff and sore.

"Dom! Oh, Dom, you're back!" A shadow blocked out the light - a shadow that resolved into the tired, tear-streaked face of _Mal_. "I was so worried..."

Dom turned his head from side to side, bewildered. Sterile greenish-white walls framed the small room. A monitor beeped to itself in one corner, and a nightstand painted a muted cream that clashed hideously with the walls sstood next to him, a brown leather purse with brass buckles atop it. A clear plastic bag of fluid hung from an aluminum stand next to his bed, a plastic line snaking worryingly from the bag to the back of his hand. The room shrieked _hospital_. "What am I doing here?" he asked, and his voice was a quiet croak.

"You don't remember?" Mal asked, grabbing his hand and kissing it. Her cheeks were salty-wet. "We were taking the kids out for a trip to the zoo. They were so looking forward to it, so excited... You were turning, and a car went through the red light and hit us."

"I remember..." Dom paused. Vague memories flitted through his mind. Was that what had happened? He remembered a day out for the family, Phillipa and James carefully strapped in their car seats in the back, Mal smiling as a shaft of sunlight fell through the car window onto her face, then - a fuzzy nothing. The words _post-traumatic anterograde amnesia_ meandered unhelpfully through his brain. "James, Phillipa - how are the kids? Where are they?" He struggled, trying to pull himself upright.

"They're fine, they're fine, sweetheart." She pressed at his chest, and he relaxed under her hand. "They're at home with my parents. They've been coming every day to visit. My mother tells them, 'Talk to him, just like it is a phone call,' and they do. You seemed to hear them." She ventures a smile, as if seeing how it would fit.

"I did." Dom licked his lips; his tongue felt like a fuzzy slab of old meat. "I want to see them."

"You will. I'll call père and tell him to come with them." She fumbled in the purse by his bed, drawing out her cell phone. "Oh, god, Dom, I'm so glad you're awake." Her lips were soft and warm on his cheek.


	2. Chapter 2

Dom was surprised at how quickly his body came back to him, as he sat up and experimentally moved his limbs. "You were in the coma for less than a week," Mal told him as she hung up the phone. "The doctors told me that your brain was working, working too much, really, and that was not letting the blood drain from your injury properly... they did surgery to remove the blood." She reached out to touch the stitches in the right side of his head, his hair shaven and stubbly around them. "You seemed so much calmer after that."

"It felt like years." His voice was coming back, as well; Mal offered him a bottle of water from her purse, and he sipped it gingerly, the liquid hitting his stomach oddly. "I had the strangest dreams."

"Forget the dreams, you're back here, now."

Dom looked up quickly as the door opened, half-rising from the bed - but he settled back when two bright-eyed children failed to run into the room. A man in a conservative black suit stepped in, instead. He was tall enough that his salt-and-pepper hair would brush the doorframe if he stood straight, but he walked slightly hunched over, as if apologizing that he let his body take the whole 'height' thing this far. His face was broad, and as sad as a bulldog's. "Dominic Cobb?" he asked.

"Who wants to know?" Dom replied, irritated. He wanted his family, not this stranger.

The man reached into his pocket, pulling out what certainly looked like a detective's shield. "Detective Gimble, NYPD. I need a moment of your time."

"For what?" Dom asked, squeezing Mal's hand. She was staring at the man with suspicion.

Gimble closed the door behind him, walking over to the bed and towering over it slightly. "I work with the organized crime taskforce for the city of New York. Mister Cobb - I regret to inform you that you may have been... inadvertently pulled into rather an uncomfortable position."

"Keep talking," Dom replied, warily.

"The car that hit you - are you familiar with the Lucchese family?" He nodded at the startled and worried expressions that crossed Mal's face. Dom frowned, trying to place the name, but the context made it clear enough. "One of their small-time hit men was running from a job, and rather destroyed your Camry, resulting in - well, your current state. He escaped, but we had plenty of witnesses to confirm his identity. Now, I don't tell you this to frighten you. This could all come to nothing - he might think no more of you than if you were a telephone pole that he happened to run into. However, we can't just hope you'll be safe and run with that. I need you to keep an eye out for this man." Gimble reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a photograph of a man of vaguely Italian-American appearance, his face lean and sharp-angled, his dark hair slicked back. "If you see him, immediately go to the nearest safe location - a police station, a government building - and call me." He reached into his breast pocket again, withdrawing a business card, stark black lettering against a plain background. He placed it on the nightstand next to Mal's purse. "Again - this may be nothing. But I want you to be aware."

"Thank you," Dom nodded. Mal frowned. But before she could say anything, the door to the room cracked open. A young boy's voice said, "Daddy?" A shrill girl's voice shrieked, "Daddy!"

Phillipa and James ran into the room, a hurricane of sun-dress and jeans and sandals and fair hair, trying to clamber atop Dom's bed. He grabbed for them both, and the scene was a delicious tangle of Phillipa, James, and Mal, all trying to hug each other at once.

Dom did notice, over the top of Phillipa's head, Gimble replace the photograph in his pocket, nod curtly, and walk out of the door, excusing himself as he walked around Dom's parents.

Dom turned back to his pile of family, but one reservation now tickled uncomfortably at the back of his mind.


	3. Chapter 3

Père and Mrs. Miles drove the family home from the hospital in their station wagon, Dom and Mal in the middle seat, James and Phillipa playing spot-the-roadsign from their seats in the back.

"What happened to our car?" Dom asked Mal, shifting his legs uncomfortably against the back of the seat in front of him.

"The insurance company has it. They said it is a total loss, but that our underinsured motorist insurance will cover us. We'll have to get a new one. I spoke to Mr. Saito, too - he said that you could have some time off of work to get settled again." She held his hand tightly, almost too tightly, which was exactly as tightly as he wanted to be held.

Miles brought the car to a gentle stop as the barricades at the railroad crossing ahead fell, the alarms jangling in warning of the oncoming train. He set the handbrake on the car and turned. "How are you feeling, Dom?"

Dom held out his hand, wiggling his fingers experimentally. "Surprisingly good."

Miles's gaze always made Dom feel younger than he was. "Well, take it easy, all right? You had a fairly bad head injury, and you need time to recover."

Dom ventured a smile. "You take care of the construction business, and I'll take care of my head."

"Oh, you..." Mrs. Miles trilled in her distressingly Stepfordian way, as the last traincar rattled by. Miles shifted the car back into gear, and trundled over the crossing as the barriers rotated up and out of the way. A dark blue BMW came through on the other side, and Dom slid down slightly in his seat at the sight of the slender driver with slicked-back black hair. Just coincidence, he thought. The man's eyes skittered over the station wagon, then went back to the road ahead.

Dom felt ridiculously relieved to finally arrive at their house. It was set back along a fairly quiet and inactive B-road, with a gravel driveway that crunched under the tires of the station wagon. Miles had built this house as a wedding gift for Dom and Mal, and the tradeoff of its relative isolation for the quietude and extensive connection to nature had never left Dom with the desire for it to be any closer to civilization. Their closest neighbor Tim lived a half a mile away, and Dom was sure their affable reltionship would not be as good if they lived any closer to each other.

Dom could not help looking back up the driveway when he got out of the car, but the road was deserted. No sound of traffic could be heard, no matter how hard he strained.

He lifted the hatch, unstrapping Phillipa and James from their carseats. Mal picked up James, and Phillipa jumped about with nervous energy on the driveway. "Daddy - can we play?" she asked.

"Daddy needs to rest," Mal chided gently. "You can play outside a bit."

Dom felt an urge to disagree on principle, hating to play the invalid - but he did feel a bit sick and dizzy. Miles had gotten out of the car, and he grasped Dom's upper arm. "Let me know if you need anything," he said, his paternal gaze focused on Dom.

"I will." Dom nodded.

* * *

It was infinitely soothing to finally be sitting in his familiar soft leather armchair in the living room, looking out of the sliding glass doors at their extensive backyard. He watched Phillipa climb a small, sturdy tree outside, as James played with a gyroscope on the floor at Dom's feet. "I had the strangest dreams, Mal," Dom sighed.

She did not look up from preparing tomato sandwiches in the kitchen, but Dom could feel her attention turn to him. "Tell me about them."

Dom closed his eyes. Cities collapsing into dust. Italian mobsters shooting. Walls closing in. Spinning, dizzily. "I dreamed I was - well, trapped in my dreams." He opened his eyes. The room felt so wonderfully real compared to the strange visions bouncing in his head. The smell of wood, the feel of leather, the way the afternoon sun glinted off of Mal's eyelashes.

"Well, you were." She expertly trimmed the crust off of the children's sandwiches, whipping the knife around the edges. "Just your subconscious, thrashing around." A sad frown danced at the edges of her mouth.

James walked to Dom's chair and tugged at his leg. Dom reached down and pulled the boy onto his lap, delighting in the closeness. "Daddy," James complained, holding up his toy, "it's all messed up."

The string that started his gyroscope spinning was tangled. Dom quickly untangled it. James watched his fingers at work, fascinated, and Phillipa trotted in with grass-stained knees to watch, as well. Dom threaded the end of the string through the hole in the top of the toy, wound it around and around the central shaft, then set the toy down and yanked on the string, hard. The gyroscope spun, perched perfectly on the point at its bottom, and James laughed with delight.

"Wash your hands, Phillipa," Mal chided, walking in with a plate full of sandwiches. Phillipa sighed, but trotted over to the sink. She stood on the stool Mal had set out for her, turning on the tap and scrubbing the tree bark and dirt off of her hands expertly. Mal bent down to put the sandwiches on the coffee table, and Dom's gaze moved over her shapely buttocks and back to the sliding glass door and into the yard beyond, where that slender man from Gimble's photograph stood, a gun pointed directly at Dom.

Some instinct that Dom did not know he had took over, and he flung himself to the ground. Mal stood and looked over at him, a question forming in her mouth, but before it could emerge, the plate shattered in her hand and a hole about the size of a quarter appeared in the back of the chair, right where Dom's head had been.

Mal screamed, and Dom grabbed her leg and yanked down, toppling her to the floor. He grabbed James, as well. "Get down, Phillipa!" he yelled, and the girl slipped behind the countertop, sticking her fingers in her ears as another shot flew through the other side of the door, shattering its pane of glass and brushing Dom's hair as he scuttled backwards.

The sound of a man's voice shouting drifted up the hill, followed by the unmistakable bang of a shotgun blast. The shots ceased for a moment as Dom pulled a terrified Mal and a crying James around the kitchen cabinets to where Phillipa sat, her eyes squeezed shut and her fingers still jammed in her ears.

"Y'all all right?" a familiar voice said, and Dom looked around the corner. Tim stepped through the shattered glass door, his Labrador/Rottweiler mutt Buster trotting behind, looking around suspiciously.

"Tim!" Dom cried, waving. "Yeah, we're... OK. Thank god you showed up."

"Yeah, I was just out and about shootin' up the rabbits that are breeding like goddam... well, rabbits around here, when I saw some skinny little bastard shootin' in your window. Buster and I chased him off. Whatinhell is going on?"

Dom stood, holding a shaking and terrified James close, stroking his hair. "I don't know. Some mistake..." The lie stuck sideways in his throat.

"That boy seemed awfully determined for a mistake." Tim looked down the hill to the small woods they bordered, frowning. "I wish I had gotten a clean shot, I woulda taken his head off. Quick little bastard, that one. You should call the police."

Dom thought about Gimble's business card in his pocket. "I should. Can you... hang out for a moment, while I do?" He kicked the shattered plate aside, his foot toppling James's still-spinning gyroscope. He glanced at Mal, seeing recognition from Gimble's warning dawn in her eyes before she bent out of sight behind the cabinet to comfort Phillipa.

"Sure thing, Dom," Tim replied, looking out over the back yard with suspicion.


	4. Chapter 4

The police presence that descended almost immediately on the Cobb household was everything Dom might have predicted from television dramas. Yellow tape was strung across the property, while serious men and women in uniforms took fingerprints in the house and spoke with each other in hushed tones in the yard. James had found refuge in Mal's arms and refused to leave, and though Phillipa trotted around on her own feet, looking around with curiosity, she stayed close to Dom's legs, grabbing his pants every so often as if to reassure herself that he was there.

"Wilson says our dogs have picked up a trail. We'll see where it leads." Gimble stood up straighter in the front yard than he had at the hospital, clearly in his element as he choreographed the police bustle like an oversized James Levine. "We have a cordon around your property. Once the boys have done their work, I'll leave a crew to keep watch. They'll stay out of sight, but they'll make sure nobody gives you any trouble." He jammed his hands in the pockets of his suit pants, a serious look on his face. "I don't like this one bit. Mob hits are bad enough, but starting in on innocent bystanders? We're going to nail this sonofabitch."

Dom looked down quickly at Phillipa, wondering about the wisdom of exposing her to both violence and bad language on the same day. Gimble looked down, too, and licked his lips nervously. "Why don't you go relax? We've swept the children's rooms, and they don't have any good lines-of-sight from below..."

Dom took the hint, taking Phillipa into the house with him, climbing the carpeted stairs and heading for the children's rooms. He paused for a moment in the corridor. Mal's voice drifted out from the closed door of James's room, singing "The Court of King Caractacus," encouraging the boy to join into his favorite song. He did, his voice quavering slightly, and Dom let a deep breath and a little tension drain out of him.

Phillipa ran ahead and jumped onto her bed, bouncing a little. "Do you feel all right, baby?" Dom asked, following and sitting next to her.

"I'm OK," she replied, bravely, staring up at him with her eyes wide. "But tell me a story. That might make you feel better."

Dom smiled internally, stroking her hair. "You're right, it would. What story would you like to hear?"

"Tell me about your dreams, when you were sleeping all that time."

Dom shrugged. "They weren't very good dreams, sweetheart."

Phillipa flopped back on the bed. "I know. I have bad dreams sometimes, too. I tell my friends at school about them, and I feel better afterwards."

"I dreamed I was trapped in dreams," he said, closing his eyes. So... odd, those dreams, and so persistent. Well, he had never been in a coma before. Perhaps coma dreams were more vivid than usual - like those rare, terrifying dreams from his childhood that were so real in all five senses that he could remember them to this day. "And I trapped other people in dreams."

"That wasn't very nice - why did you do that?"

"I wanted... information out of them. And I could get it in dreams." He looked over at Phillipa, who was staring at him with curiosity, but no fear. "It was my job. Like how I go to work now, down in the city, only in my dream, I went all over the world."

"How did you get information out of dreams? Dreams are just made-up in your brain!" Dom could tell he had tapped into the budding scientist in Phillipa, and that seemed a good way to take her mind off of the trauma of this afternoon.

"You let yourself go in dreams, and reveal more than you might otherwise. I was... good at making people talk."

Phillipa sat up and hugged him. "I like this story, daddy. It's fun. I want to hear more about how you did that some time." She grinned up at him, and he kissed her forehead.

* * *

Dom had trouble sleeping that night; he finally gave up trying, and got out of bed to prowl around the house. He peeked in at the sleeping forms of James and Phillipa, then trotted down the stairs to stare out into the back yard, seeing a moving human shape in every wind-tossed tree branch. After some eternal time that the green digital clock on the stove told him was only about half an hour, Mal walked down the stairs, a robe wrapped tightly around her, and touched Dom's arm. "Come back to bed, Dom. The police are out there."

"I want to get a gun," Dom sighed, still staring outside.

"For what?" she asked, irritated. "If he shows up, you want to play Wild West? If he can get through the police and the dogs, do you really think you're going to stop him with a gun? And what happens when James finds it and wants to play with it?"

Dom stood downstairs for some time after she gave up and returned to bed.

However, the next few days settled Dom down a bit. Without the present danger returning, with the occasional glimpse of a police officer to reassure him that they were being protected, he found himself relaxing. He let the children play outside after a day (under his watchful eye, of course), and did not fret as much as he thought he might when Mal insisted on tending the garden. The children retuned to life as usual with the resilience of the young. James had found his new favorite toy in his gyroscope, spinning it ceaselessly until Dom said playtime was over and it was time for him to come in, making Phillipa come down from the tree or put away the latest bit of wildlife she had found to admire (frogs being a particular favorite).

Phillipa delighted in his dream-stories, listening with eager eyes, hands clutching the blanket, when he tucked her in and gave her yet another sample. He couldn't remember all _that_ much, really, but he found that making up stories of stealing from dreams came easily to him. He told her about tricking a man into thinking that his closest secret was kept in a briefcase, making him create that briefcase for Dom to look in. He told her about a woman who confided in her closest friend - who Dom could twist, in the dream, into a hopeless gossip.

He was surprised how easily stories flew into his mind - a Samurai suit of armor, Dom posing as the washer/dryer delivery man, a jetski trip - and Phillipa delighted in all of them. Their home life rapidly returned to something a little more normal.

* * *

It took less than a week for the insurance check for the Camry to arrive, and Mal demanded that they go get another car. Dom felt comfortable enough at this point to take Mrs. Miles up on her offer to look after the kids for a bit while he and Mal took the station wagon out to the dealer.

The check was generous enough that Dom let Mal talk them into a new Fit, with half the purchase price down and half financed. She loved the bolstered seat, the stereo, the integrated bluetooth, and he insisted that she drive it back to the house, following behind as Dom drove Miles's car. Both on the way up and on the way back, he saw an unusual density of police cars, and appreciated that. Perhaps, he thought, the hit man had seen enough to realize they were harmless, and not worth the effort.

When they returned and parked in the gravel driveway, Dom could not help noticing that the house was utterly quiet. The children at play were not at _all_ quiet, and even though they might simply be napping... the door lock felt a little bit too loose to Dom. "Wait there," he hissed at Mal, holding up his palm, and she paused with her hand on the inside door lever of the Fit, her face a mask of worry. Dom opened the front door quietly, slipping inside.

Mrs. Miles lay on the floor of the entryway, a neat hole in her head, her expression even more vacuous than usual. Panic gripped Dom, but he took a deep breath and walked quietly up the stairs, placing his feet carefully and staying to the side to avoid any creaks. The children might be unharmed, and Dom would only rile up that asshole if he burst in, making their situation more dangerous. Dom's only chance was stealth, to sneak up on the hit man, and with any luck he would be able to wring a certain scrawny little neck. Dom grabbed the broom that stood at the top of the landing - little enough for a weapon, but it would have to do.

As he approached the bedrooms at the back of the hall, he heard noises coming from Phillipa's room - little noises he couldn't quite place, some sounding like labored breathing, and some sounding wet, like Phillipa was playing with her little gummi octopus that slithered down the wall when she threw it. Dom crept closer, looking through the open door - and froze at the scene in front of him.

The hit man sat on Phillipa's bed. He wore impeccable suit pants, but his jacket, tie, and waistcoat were flung haphazardly aside, and his shirt was unbuttoned. Phillipa sat on his lap, rubbing the exposed portion of his chest, her small fingers circling his nipple. Her lips were on his, kissing him in a way that Dom was absolutely certain a six-year-old girl should have _no_ experience with.

Dom must have made a noise, because the hit man's eyes flew open, and he at least had the grace to look as shocked as Dom. Dom ran forward with a yell, swinging the broom handle, and the man raised his gun and shot Dom right between the eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

Dom's eyes flew open, glancing from side to side. The dream fell away like a heavy blanket, leaving Dom's brain instantly alert. The seat was gently rocking - a train, from the myriad physical and aural cues. Eames sat directly across from Dom, hooked into a PASIV, with a far-too-beatific expression on his face; next to him, Freddy G., point-man-for-hire, was not hooked in. Or formerly for hire, as the hole in his forehead and the blood trickling down his dark face seemed a bit career-limiting.

Dom looked over; Arthur was ripping off his connection, squeezed into the same seat as Dom, on the other side of the man who had been pretending to be Detective Gimble, NYPD. That man was also still hooked in, but all of these were secondary concerns. Dom ripped the PASIV connection out, jumping upright and grasping Arthur around his neck. "You sick _fuck_..."

Pain exploded in Dom's stomach as Arthur delivered a firm gut punch, and Dom folded gracelessly. Arthur grabbed Dom under the arms and pulled the door to the private berth open, both of them stumbling down the corridor. "I'm sorry about that," he murmured in Dom's ear, appearing - as always - to actually mean it. "We have to go."

"Phillipa..." Dom croaked, and then it hit. "Fuck. Eames."

"Yeah... he didn't look like that when we started." Arthur's voice sounded appropriately embarrassed.

Dom took a deep breath and pulled away from Arthur, trying to regain a little wind and stand upright. This odd love/hate thing Eames and Arthur had _really_ needed to be dealt with, Dom pondered - yet again. Not that Dom had any idea how, any more than when a trip back to the meeting-spot after the Cairo job to pick up a forgotten knapsack had given Dom that initial clue that their relationship was not fully platonic - in the form of Arthur and Eames screwing like rabbits on the table that had been holding Nash's models.

Arthur was as loyal to Dom as a beagle, but his soft spot for a man who was loyal to anyone whose checks cleared... well, it hadn't actually gotten in the way of any of their jobs yet, mercifully, but it had certainly given Dom nightmare fuel enough for one lifetime.

"What was that all about?" Dom panted, trying to remember what had happened before being hooked in. Anything beyond the New Orleans nightclub where Dom and Arthur had been sizing up their latest mark was gone, however, memories slipping through Dom's brain like water through cupped hands.

Arthur noted Dom's furrowed brow and nodded. "They gave you some strong stuff. Don't know where they got it from, but it sure seemed to do a number on your memory. I came as soon as I tracked down where they took you; I shot Freddy when he gave me some trouble, and patched in. I tried to get you out with the car crash, but you were still too sedated to come out; I had to wait for it to wear off a bit." Arthur looked away, frowning. "I just didn't know what to do about that fucking Phillipa forgery. What was she asking you about?"

"Just about how I... shit, how I extract. Trade secrets." Dom leaned against the gently rocking wall of the train with a groan. Tucking Eames into bed and telling him _all_ about how to extract information from a mark.

Arthur sucked in his lower lip. " _Fuck_. I have to do something..." He glanced back up the corridor, then back at Dom.

Dom looked back where they came from. "Eames knows too much, now."

"He always did. I'll deal with it," Arthur said, quickly. "I'll kill Forsythe. Eames won't have any need to fulfill his contract to a dead man, and he's hardly going to give that information away for free. Besides - well, did Forsythe see you? In reality?"

Dom frowned, shaking his head. "I just can't _remember_." Then the name hit. "Wait - Damien Forsythe?"

"You have high-quality men interested in your brain these days." Arthur quirked a smile, then pulled out his gun purposefully and walked back towards the berth they had exited. "I won't be a moment."

Arthur's gun was silenced, and only the slightest sound was audible through the berth door. The door opened after a moment more, and Arthur exited, brushing a stray drop of blood from his hand with a handkerchief. "Done. Forsythe is dead. I kicked Eames out and left him pretty heavily drugged. He'll have a lot of explaining to do when he's found in a train berth with two dead bodies." Arthur still looked a bit peeved at Eames's latest mindfuck. "We'll get off at the next station." He folded the handkerchief carefully, blood side in, and replaced it in his pocket.

"Where is this train taking us?" Dom asked.

"I don't know for sure."

"It doesn't matter," Dom sighed. "We'll just go back to Lafayette. We'll have to start over on the Simone job regardless."

They made their way to the observation car, finding two empty seats. The scenery flying past the window looked utterly Midwestern, quite in keeping with the Amtrak train. Dom would not have wanted to put a bet on which square, flat state they were flying through.

"What did you use on Eames?" Dom asked, leaning back in the chair.

"Whatever they used on you. Freddy had a few extra vials on him."

Dom chuckled without amusement. "That was absolutely the strangest trip I have ever taken, the most vivid dreams I have _ever_ had. All the senses, just crystal-clear."

"So it was worth stealing a bit of it?" Arthur drew an ampoule out of his inner breast pocket, dark brown glass with a slender neck. "He had five, I used one on Eames."

"Perfect." Dom nodded. "We have to get this to a decent chemist and get it synthesized. That is a _quality_ drug. It might be a bit difficult keeping ourselves in the know in the dream - but - shit, with that stuff, we could extract _anything_." Dom felt an odd excitement, stirrings of that euphoria from the first-ever PASIV dream. This would be a step beyond, certainly.

They watched the flat, dull scenery until it started to slow, and the speakers burbled a message from the conductor that Lincoln, Nebraska would be the next stop. Dom and Arthur walked to the door, hopping off of the car once the train came to a stop, entering the small train station.

"Can you excuse me for a sec?" Dom asked Arthur, jerking a thumb towards the ladies' room. Arthur nodded, leaning against the wall, trying (and failing) to look nonchalant.

Dom walked into the restroom and splashed water on her face, looking at her reflection in the mirror. With Forsythe's death, once again only Arthur and Eames knew what the extractor Dom Cobb looked like in reality - it had kept the kids safe, so far, and after losing Mal, she did not want to take any more chances.

Dom pulled the top out of her pocket, placed it on the grungy countertop surrounding the sink, and spun it.


End file.
